The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [21]
Still, I couldn’t imagine what I was getting myself into. I had left the safe microcosm of a college classroom to live in the underbelly of society, a place completely foreign to a theoretical sociologist like me. My spinning mind wouldn’t let me sleep.
But then I tried something else. I started remembering all the lessons I had learned next to the dreamseller, reliving each experience. I tried to think about everything that had happened hours earlier. The experience of following this stranger was so powerful that I thought less about the top of the building and more about my home under the bridge, less about suicide and more about my journey.
And then it hit me. Everyone should set out like this, without a goal or a destination, at least for a day, searching for the lost pieces of themselves. These thoughts relaxed me, the anxiety passed and sleep approached.
I learned that night that what determines how soft a bed feels depends on the anxiety inside our heads. One only sleeps well when he can find peace within. I was beginning to think like the dreamseller. I ignored whatever worry lay ahead. For the moment, that tattered lump became the most comfortable of mattresses.
A Band of Misfits
IT WAS FOUR IN THE MORNING, COLD AND WINDY, WHEN I awoke to a desperate cry.
“The bridge is gonna collapse! It’s gonna collapse!” Bartholomew screamed. He was panting, terrified.
My heart was racing. I had never been so afraid. I leaped up, trying to run.
But the dreamseller took my arm and urged me to stay calm.
“Calm, how? We could die!” I said, looking at the construction and seeing old cracks, in the darkness, as if they were new.
Calmly, he told me, “Bartholomew is going through alcohol withdrawal.”
My survival instinct had kicked in, even though a few hours earlier I had wanted to end my life. My drunken companion had led me to one of the greatest discoveries of my life: Even those who plan their death don’t want to die; they want to kill their pain. I took a deep breath, tried to relax, but my heart was racing. I looked at Bartholomew, who was in a state of terror.
He was in a state of delirium tremens. Because he was addicted, and his body craved alcohol, he was suffering shortness of breath, accelerated heart rate and excessive sweating. The worst part was that his already confused mind shut down, and he was starting to hallucinate.
After imagining that the bridge was falling, he started having other wild visions. He saw spiders and rats the size of automobiles scurrying along the ground, threatening to devour him. His face was dripping with sweat, his hands shaking. His entire body was hot with fever. As the dreamseller always said, you can run from the monsters outside but not those within. And it’s incredible how the human mind tries to create phantoms to frighten away those demons. Even in our digital world, these primitive feelings still exist.
Bartholomew tried to fight the beasts attacking him from within. He screamed in agony, “Chief, help me! Help me!”
We tried to calm him and sat him down on an old crate. But he jumped to his feet with a new nightmare, and, another time, he ran down the street in fear. There were millions of alcoholics in this country, but I never imagined how much they suffered. I just thought they were happy drunks. Fearing Bartholomew would be run over, the dreamseller suggested we take him to a public hospital three blocks away.
That’s the day I began to give a little of myself to others without asking anything in return. Of course, there’s always self-interest in the things we do, but as the dreamseller said, there are interests that go beyond financial gain and public recognition, such as those linked to the fulfillment of contributing to the well-being of others. It was a system of trade unforeseen by capitalism or socialism, a world alien to me.
I began to understand that selfish people live in a prison of their worries. But those who work to